Love Never Dies Read Online Free PDF Page A

wanted to . . . I wanted to tell her to run.
    He was stalking her.
    But I had broken the rules, whatever rules there were, and I was imprisoned in that dark corner of the park, mute, invisible, while blood seeped through the soil and smothered me with grief.
    Then Areila disappeared. She was gone for over a week, and I was glad.
    If only she had stayed away . . .
    On a gray day in the late afternoon I heard her making her way across the park toward the corner that led into the woods — the corner where darkness dwells. I wanted to shout at her no! But I wasn't there. Not really. I was nothing more than a scent on the air, a shadow you catch out of the corner of your eye that disappears when you face it. I was merely waiting . . . waiting for another dose of horror and helplessness.
    I didn't want it to be her horror.
    I could not stand it to be my helplessness.
    She left the sidewalk, crunched across old leaves and fallen pine needles to stand at the soft, recently disturbed mound of dirt. The witch hazel was blooming — the shrubs were always the first to vanquish winter — and as she removed her knit cap, the yellow blossoms framed her head. She was young, pretty, unwary — and I was afraid for her. She held a shovel in one hand; she planted it firmly in the dirt. "Frank Vincent Montgomery, I don't know if you can hear me, but I wanted to tell you — I figured out why I can see you. When you gave me your name, you gave me the clue I needed . . . Does the name Sofia mean anything to you?"
    Yes! Yes! Sofia is my love! But I couldn't communicate. All the times I had haunted Eugene Park when I wanted to be elsewhere, listened to the crazy people, tried to stop the murders . . . and now, when I desperately longed to be beside the fountain or standing among the grand old cedars, I was not.
    "Sofia was my great-grandmother." Areila waited again.
    Of course! I should have known. I had compared Areila to Sofia in her spirit and her personality, but hadn't seen the resemblance between them.
    Out of nowhere, a thought struck me. Maybe . . . maybe because Areila resembled me.
    That one night Sofia and I shared had been brief and in the end, bitter. Foolish man and careless lover that I am, it never occurred to me she would bear my child.
    Areila said aloud what I was thinking. "You're my great-grandfather! That's the connection between us. I know it is!"
    If I could have cried tears, I would have cried tears of joy — and of fear.
    "Before I told you my suspicions, I wanted some proof. So I called my great-aunt Bea. Aunt Busybody the family calls her. She's a nice lady. Really. But she loves to gossip. I asked her about her sister's mother-in-law, pried really, and she spilled the whole story. She said Grandma Sofia married my great-grandfather, an older man, Facundo Baptista, a widower who already had four kids, and moved to the Yakima Valley. My grandfather was the first child born, six months after they got married, and Aunt Bea said Sofia insisted on naming him Frank Vincent. How about that!" As she told her story, Areila's eyes sparkled. She gestured, waved the shovel, pointed up at the treetops, down at the ground.
    Ah. Now I saw the resemblance. She had inherited her exuberance from Sofia.
    Areila continued, "The matriarch of the Baptista family was furious, said the child should have a Hispanic name, but Sofia wouldn't budge. Her husband was a cold bastard, and he didn't care what Sofia named her son as long as she put meals on the table, kept the house clean and sent his kids out to work in the orchards."
    My darling Sofia had not gone on to make a love match. I was not glad; I had hoped that somehow she would find happiness.
    "Aunt Bea said my grandfather, Frank Vincent Baptista, didn't look like anyone in the family. He looked like an Anglo, and the family gossip was that Grandma Sofia was in the family way when she married Facundo, and not from him. I asked if anyone knew who the father was and Aunt Busybody said the